Women and Self-Employment: Why Female Entrepreneurship Is Essential for the Future
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Self-employment means more than just working without a boss—it means living your own vision, making your own decisions, and asserting yourself in an often male-dominated economic system.
What Self-Employment Really Means for Women
I work at an organization that provides guidance for women who want to start their own businesses. Most of them come to us with anticipation. They say things like, "I will be unemployed next year, and I want to weigh my options," or "I have been reading about self-employment, and I have written down my questions." They tell me, "I don't want to make a mistake. I want to avoid the common mistakes." I laugh and say, "Dear, you are not the first person I've heard say that."
Guiding Women Who Want to Start Their Own Business
Counseling women, that's what we do; that's our business. But we're not a business as such, and our model, like many other Beratungsstellen, e.g. counseling services would love to reach a peak of self-fulfillment and not be needed anymore.
Why So Many Women Seek Reassurance Before Becoming Self-Employed
What do I mean? Most of our clients are highly prepared, highly informed, and on top of their game. Still, they come to us. They want reassurance and a listening ear. Most of our clients report knowing few or no self-employed people. They are aware of the bureaucratic challenges and have heard about the tax burden.
Still, most of them will share the fact that they've had this dream for a long time: to work in their field of passion, enjoy more flexibility, and achieve financial independence, even if it means earning less money than they would as an employee. This totally coincides with the statistics.
Barriers and Biases: Why Women Still Struggle to Start Businesses
Women are underrepresented in the self-employment sector. Nevertheless, in 2022, there were around 1.2 million self-employed women in Germany, accounting for about one-third of all self-employed individuals. Although the proportion of female entrepreneurs has supposedly increased, there are still challenges in starting and running businesses, especially in certain sectors, such as technology-oriented start-ups or female-owned businesses. Where progressive measures come to rescue and to tackle wage inequality, patriarchy pops up again in mysterious ways and makes another inequality arise in some other place.
The Gender Pay Gap in Self-Employment: A Global Issue
The sad thing is, it is not mysterious, it is systemic. Overall, the willingness to start a new business remains high, which is impressive considering that, even after a couple of decades of the "gender perspective" focusing on work-life balance and wage equality, women still are underrepresented or underpaid. The gender pay gap for self-employed people is shocking across the globe. Sadly, this disparity stems from various complex factors, including negotiation patterns, industry segregation, platform algorithm biases, client perceptions, and systemic barriers.
How Women Entrepreneurs Redefine Success
Historically and prototypically, women are more careful with money and more determined. They need to understand every step, they have a need to qualify themselves ad infinitum. They weigh their options, and usually, they have other people that depend on them.
Why Female-Led Businesses Are the Future
Believe me, i am totally against making sweeping statement about all women, I personally struggle which such generalizations, but then if I don't face the statistics of the inequalities I don't know how to even begin to tackle this heavy topic, and how at the same time honor all the work that has been done before me.
From where I stand, women are doing everything right, I don't think there is anything women should do differently. Once they have decided, the day has come. They thrive and achieve what they want, at their own pace, steady. A women-led business is destined to be successful. It cannot be any other way; it's not only fair. It's also necessary.
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About the Author
Rafaela Wahl-Herrera is a multilingual project associate at the Gründerinnenzentrale, serving as the first point of contact in Berlin’s central office for women interested in founding their own business. She offers orientation talks in Spanish and, when needed, can interpret into sign language. In her advisory capacity, Rafaela consults women founders on their business journey—from first idea and planning through to launch and growth. Outside of her core project work, she is active as a live-sound technician within a feminist music collective and brings a deep passion for music into everything she does.
